I'm looking for places around the city that
display signs of urban decay for a photography project. Dilapidated
buildings, plants encroaching on the urban environment, etc. I've been
directed to neighborhoods like Englewood but I'm not comfortable going
there. Does you know of neighborhoods that display signs of urban decay but
that a single female can travel relatively safely?

Let me get this straight, ma'am. You want to find neighborhoods that are
really bad but nice? That could be tough to deliver on. Photographing
ruins can be a relatively nonthreatening experience if you specialize in old
barns, say, but even that has its dangerous side, and in the city, well,
this isn't work for the timid. One appreciates that women are more likely to
be crime targets than men, and some methods of capturing the urban scene
involve less risk than others. But a certain amount of enterprise and skill
are indispensable. Assuming you can summon the requisite resources, here are
a few things you need to know.

You should understand, first of all, that you walk in the footsteps of
giants


in particular
Richard Nickel, the
legendary Chicago photographer whose classic shot of what remains of a
south side neighborhood appears at the top of this column. Nickel's
thousands of pictures brilliantly captured a city that was slipping away
before his eyes. He died in 1972 when a section of the building he was
shooting, Adler & Sullivan's
Chicago
Stock Exchange, collapsed and buried him. (It was being demolished at
the time; that's why he was photographing it.) His body wasn't found for 28
days. An excellent introduction to his work is
Richard Nickel's Chicago by Richard Cahan and Michael Williams (2006).
You should read it. He's a tough act to follow.

But not an impossible one. Photographing the
built environment in decline is a thriving specialty that has produced some
extraordinary images. One current exponent is
Camilo Jose
Vergaro. His best known book is
American Ruins (1999), which includes a number of shots taken in Chicago
and environs. More recently he published
Unexpected Chicagoland (2002), co-authored with Tim Samuelson; he also
did a series on public housing in the city for
Granta's 2009 Chicago
issue. One of Vergaro's favorite techniques is a photographic series
showing the
deterioration of an urban place over time. Here's a
slideshow
he did for Slate that includes some shots
from Chicago plus many others from Detroit. (Detroit puts Chicago in the
shade in this respect; more on this below.)

There's a lot more where that came from.
Flickr, the online photo sharing service, offers thousands of images of
modern ruins from around the world, which have been gathered into "pools"
(galleries). Here are a few:

Some of the photos are haunting or sad; others
are weirdly pretty or just gorgeous. All of them are fascinating. For
background, you might want to take a look through the
Atlas of Shrinking Cities (2006), published by a German consortium,
which gives a sense of the phenomenon behind it all, or much of it: while
many cities are growing, a surprising number, not just in the U.S., are
emptying out.

One thing you'll notice is that many of the
photos required a lot more than simply standing on the sidewalk and taking a
snapshot. Often the photographer had to do a lot of hiking, climbing, and
clambering about to find a good vantage point. This raises a delicate issue.
Taking pictures of ruins goes hand in hand with the somewhat disreputable
practice of urban
exploration  prowling around places you're not supposed to be. A lot of
times this is illegal or dangerous. The parent in me recommends against
doing things like this. My inner kid recognizes why somebody would.

You don't sound like the type who's going to
push the envelope, blackbird; I raise the subject simply to make two points.
First, getting a memorable shot typically will require some combination of
preparation, quick thinking, risk taking, and luck  frequently all four.
Second, it can be intrusive, in multiple senses of the term. You need to be
prepared to deal with all that. One doesn't want to be a complete asshole,
but if you think there's an easy way to do this, I'm sorry, there's not.

Now, where to shoot? In Detroit you can
just walkout the
door, but Chicago is tougher than it was. A good spot used to be south
of Roosevelt between Ashland and Damen, which had almost entirely returned
to prairie. But there's been some construction in recent years, plus those
ridiculous parking meters. I venture to say there's still a photo there,
though.

Other shots may require more scouting and
planning. Some of the following opportunities have come and gone, but they
give you an idea what others are doing:

Michael Reese Hospital. This series is on flickr. The shot of
brains in
bottles is especially unforgettable. I'm told demolition is now pretty
far along (I haven't been down there lately). Unless you got permission,
which isn't likely, you'd likely be risking injury or arrest for criminal
trespass, so this isn't the place for you.

Abandoned coke
plant. One of many derelict industrial sites on the south side. Still
there, as far as I know.

None of this sounds like your cup of
tea? There's still hope. I commend to you the example of Pat O'Neil, who
provides most of the photos featured in this column. Believe it or not, Pat
isn't a professional photographer; he simply has an exquisite eye. His
flickr photostream
is an education in photography. Remember that your charge is simply to find
signs of urban decay. These are to be found everywhere, even in
neighborhoods that are perfectly safe. Pat's gift is to be able to walk down
an ordinary city street and see sights that are invisible until he shows
them to you. Many of these involve the ceaseless process of decomposition
that's your ultimate subject. Whether you have a similar talent you'll have
to discover for yourself. All I know is that Pat does it
againand
againand
again.